Archive for April, 2011

I’m a Photographer, Not a Terrorist! (PHNAT), the campaign group set up to fight unnecessary and draconian restrictions against individuals taking photographs in public spaces, is organising a flashmob outside London’s City Hall.

PHNAT is concerned about the role of private security guards in the prevention of terrorism. Their role has been promoted by police, with the result that many privately employed guards are illegally preventing citizens from taking any photographs at all.

Areas designated as public realm are often privately managed spaces that are subject to rules laid down by the private management companies. Most insidious of these is the outright banning of photography in some of our most widely enjoyed public spaces, such as Canary Wharf and the Thames Walk between Tower Bridge and City Hall. The mass gathering will highlight the restrictions on street photography in a public space. Photographers are encouraged to bring a tripod.

A Pakistani man holds his baby, both affected by last Saturday's earthquake as they wait to be airlifted to capital Islamabad for further treatment, at an army base in the northern Pakistani town of Muzaffarabad, Friday Oct. 14, 2005. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Photojournalists – whether they report on war or traffic accidents closer to home – stand right at the frontline of reporting on violence and tragedy. At the London Photographers’ Branch meeting on Tuesday 26 April 2011 the discussion will be on Dealing With Trauma.

Associated Press (AP) photographer Lefteris Pitarakis will be talking about some of the images that have affected him personally and leading a discussion on working through the ethical dilemmas traumatic photographs can present us with.

A Pakistani man holds his baby, both affected by last Saturday's earthquake as they wait to be airlifted to capital Islamabad for further treatment, at an army base in the northern Pakistani town of Muzaffarabad, Friday Oct. 14, 2005. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Photojournalists – whether they report on war or traffic accidents closer to home – stand right at the frontline of reporting on violence and tragedy. At the London Photographers’ Branch meeting on Tuesday 26 April 2011 the discussion will be on Dealing With Trauma, with Gavin Rees from the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma and Associated Press (AP) photographer Lefteris Pitarakis.

London Photographers’ Branch members joined General Secretary Jeremy Dear, General Secretary ElectMichelle Stanistreet and staff at North London & Herts Newspapers on the picket line this morning, on the first day of a planned two-week strike over job cuts.

Following the devastating Tōhoku earthquake in Japan, in just one week unpaid professionals and citizen journalists got together via Twitter and Facebook and created a book to raise money for the Japanese Red Cross earthquake and tsunami relief funds.

In the days following the TUC “March for the Alternative” anti-cuts protest on Saturday 26 March 2011 some media outlets published rogues galleries of 18 people sought by police for questioning, with some of the images gathered from news outlets, not just CCTV. One television news report freeze-framed on a masked protestor, the narrator saying: “Do you recognise this person?”

Less than 2 months after the repeal of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act, the coalition government has introduced a section similar in all but name. Section 47a gives a senior police officer an authorisation to stop and search if the officer ‘…reasonably suspects that an act of terrorism will take place.’ This is marginally different from Section 44 in that there must now be a reasonable suspicion that an act of terrorism will take place, previously no reasonable grounds were required.

London Photographers’ Branch members joined General Secretary Jeremy Dear, General Secretary ElectMichelle Stanistreet and staff at North London & Herts Newspapers on the picket line this morning, on the first day of a planned two-week strike over job cuts.

After the loss of five reporters and a photographer at the Enfield-based publishers over the last 18 months, Tindle Newspapers, which made a profit of more than £3 million last year, is left with three reporters and two photographers on its nine weekly titles.

The strikers have organised a demonstration tomorrow, Wednesday 20 April, at noon. More details here.

An introduction to Final Cut Pro
27th/28th April – Headland House 10-5pm

Content
A course for all photographers, who wish to extend their skills base to include video editing.

Expected learning outcomes
Participants will be able to produce multimedia slideshows, edit/export video content/edit audio, and begin to use FCP as part of their regular workflow – whether producing slideshows, videos or audio podcasts.

We will also touch on other packages in the Final Cut Studio suite – Motion and Soundtrack Pro, as well as Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. For the budget conscious, most if not all workflows shown will also work in Apple’s Final Cut Express (FCE) software.

Participants will be able to produce industry standard newspaper multimedia packages by the end of the course.

Course TutorSion Touhig is an award-winning photographer and decided to take on video as an additional skill in 2006. He began shooting and editing video for clients like the Sunday Telegraph, Good Housekeeping and Greenpeace.

Now living in Singapore, Sion has worked as Executive Multimedia Editor/Videographer at the Straits Times Multimedia Centre (MMC) since 2008. The MMC, comprising a small team of multimedia reporters, camera operators and editors (10 journalists, 4 camera operators, 10 editors) produces an average of 25-30 video news and features reports per day, 7 days a week, to deadline, as well as undertaking assignments for external clients.

Sion is now working as Deputy Multimedia Editor at ‘Today’, Singapore’s other English language national newspaper, and is responsible for developing the newspaper’s multimedia strategy.

Sion has completed edit/shooting and Video journalism courses with the BBC, Press Association and is a certified Apple FCP user but not a certified trainer. The knowledge he will be imparting is based upon 5 years experience of producing multimedia content for newspapers and other web clients, and producing finished video journalism reports to deadline.

Course requirements
No prior knowledge of Final Cut Pro is expected. The course will be taught in demo form with laptop and projector. Any participants with their own FCP/FCE enabled laptop will be welcome to bring it and follow along. Course notes in PDF form will be available.

Cost – 200.00
For more details and to book your place please contact: mail@sionphoto.com 07415 745879

Staff at North London & Herts Newspapers say “Enough is enough” in the first strike in Tindle Newspapers’ history

From Tuesday, April 19 journalists at the north London newspaper group will go on strike over the Tindle business plan that is leaving once award-winning newspapers to dwindle and die.

Bad for staff

The company is refusing to replace members of staff when they leave, while expecting increased output from its overworked employees – seemingly with no viable strategy to revive the newspapers’ fortunes.

Sir Ray Tindle has claimed to be the, “Saviour of local newspapers” and recently said: “Despite the doom-mongers regional newspapers are alive and well…”

Not in north London – here they suffer death by a thousand cutbacks. The company says our centre has to cut costs, but last year our employer Tindle Newspapers made more than £3million profit.

• More than a third of editorial staff have left without being replaced and key positions are not being filled.

• Just three reporters are churning out nine newspapers every week.

• In the past few weeks management has slashed the Sports section by half while the future of the entire Arts & Leisure section is under threat.

Bad for the community

As a consequence of its refusal to replace staff an inferior product is being delivered to our readers:

• Reporters do not have time to leave their desks meaning they are missing stories of vital importance.

• We are unable to cover a range of council meetings, attend community events, court cases and inquiries and report them to the public.

• This leads to a failure to uphold the newspapers’ fine tradition of holding public bodies to account and the worst kind of ‘churnalism’

“It’s a dispute that should not be happening. If this business is to have a future it must rely on the quality of journalism and sufficient staff to produce the titles.” Barry Fitzpatrick, NUJ Head of Publishing

“I am very concerned about the issues raised by staff at these papers. Residents in Enfield are proud to have – and deserve to continue getting – such a good quality, campaigning newspaper that can boast a distinctive style. We must remember what an important role regional newspapers play in the local community.” Nick De Bois, Conservative MP for Enfield North

“I’ve watched the standard of these papers drop over past months with great sadness. I believe that the local journalists are under additional pressures due to the reductions in staff and the number of papers they are expected to produce. This leaves them less able to investigate and evaluate stories, which not only affects quality, it affects community accountability as well.” Andy Love, Labour MP for Edmonton

• Protesters will be outside their offices at Refuge House, 9-10 River Front, Enfield, EN1 3SZ (just across from Enfield Town railway station) from Tuesday to Thursday over the next two weeks.

Your fellow journalists in the Chapel would be grateful if freelances were unavailable for work during those times and do not contract to work during those times.

The law requires us to make clear that if a freelance is already contracted to undertake work during those times but declines to do so, this would amount to a breach of contract, with the possibility of a claim by the company in the event of them being able to prove damages.

There is also the possibility that if you do not honour a contract the company would not offer you work in the future. Best then just not to accept the work in the first place.

Following the devastating Tōhoku earthquake in Japan, in just one week unpaid professionals and citizen journalists got together via Twitter and Facebook and created a book to raise money for the Japanese Red Cross earthquake and tsunami relief funds.

2:46: Aftershocks: Stories from the Japan Earthquake is a compilation of stories, essays, photographs and artwork submitted from people around the world, including those who suffered directly from the disaster. The book also contains work from Yoko Ono, William Gibson, Barry Eisler and Jake Adelstein.

The book is now available from Amazon and 100 percent of the proceeds go to the Japanese Red Cross Society to aid the victims of the 11 March earthquake.

In the days following the TUC “March for the Alternative” anti-cuts protest on Saturday 26 March 2011 some media outlets published rogues galleries of 18 people sought by police for questioning, with some of the images gathered from news outlets, not just CCTV. One television news report freeze-framed on a masked protestor, the narrator saying: “Do you recognise this person?”

The Metropolitan police force have requested all of the BBC’s footage of the day to use in their investigation into the disorder.

On Tuesday 5 April 2011 motion the LPB committee overwhelmingly passed a motion condemning in the strongest terms news-gathered images and video used as police evidence material and the publication of police rogue galleries as news reports.

Covering protests, both nationally and internationally, is already difficult and often dangerous. The danger to photographers and videographers is increased dramatically when protestors fear the images and video gathered whilst reporting events could be used by the state. With many accounts of injuries and equipment damage already reported from March 26, the actions of these news outlets only increases that risk for journalists working in the street.

Less than 2 months after the repeal of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act, the coalition government has introduced a section similar in all but name. Section 47a gives a senior police officer an authorisation to stop and search if the officer ‘…reasonably suspects that an act of terrorism will take place.’ This is marginally different from Section 44 in that there must now be a reasonable suspicion that an act of terrorism will take place, previously no reasonable grounds were required.

What is quite apparent in the application of the remedial power is that stop-and-search is still being deployed as a preventative measure against terrorism. This is despite the fact that no stop-and-search detentions under Section 44 resulted in any terrorist prosecutions. Lord Carlile, the government’s independent review of terrorism legislation, has stated that stop-and-search without suspicion was unjustifiable and had produced nil results in terrorism terms.

As photographers working in public places, we are still treated with a suspicion that is undeserved and not experienced by most citizens going about their daily task of work.

Article Written by Grant Smith

Motion passed at LPB Branch Meeting 29/03/2011

This Branch is greatly concerned by the introduction of the emergency stop and search power Section 47A of the Terrorism Act 2000.
This Branch agrees that police stop and search powers that do not require suspicion of an individual have and can impact on journalists right to report and record events.
Proposed by Marc Vallée, Seconded by Jonathan Warren – passed overwhelmingly by London Photographers’ branch members.

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Working LIves

The branch is producing a series of video interviews to illustrate the range of work undertaken by its members. The first two are with local newspaper photographer Anne-Marie Sanderson, and freelancer John Sturrock.